Translation: Darkness 08 — The Rigged Game Arc

2026/03/05 thu
闇08：翻訳Cloud

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闇08、完了です。
翻訳上の処理メモ：

特記箇所：

• 「打突」の起源と鍛錬の描写→ 指立て伏せ・新聞紙・砂利バケツ・鉄柱という段階的な訓練をすべて維持。英語圏読者に武道的な文脈が伝わるよう「nukite（spear-hand strike）」を参照として添えた。

• 「螺旋」→ Rasen（螺旋, "Spiral"） として技名を残しつつ、動作の説明を丁寧に訳出。

• 鳴戸の恫喝シーン→ 語尾を伸ばす独特のしゃべり方（「〜ですよー」「〜でしょーー」）を、英語で "~" の伸ばし音と「〜ですよー」の語調再現として対応。異質な怖さが伝わるよう。

• 総支配人との対決シーン→ 「貴様」「ボケ」のトーンを維持しつつ、岩上さんが完全に立場を逆転させる場面の気持ちよさを損なわないよう意訳。

• ヒクソングレイシー→ 括弧注釈で文脈を英語圏読者に補足。

08章はタイトル通り「仕組まれた遊戯」でした。ゲーム屋の賭博、ホテルの嫌がらせ、地下カジノの格闘——すべてが「仕組まれた場」で、岩上さんが一つずつその中に引き込まれていく。最後の「身体が震えていた」が重い。

Darkness 08 — The Rigged Game Arc

 
*Shinjuku Kabukichō / Asakusa, Tokyo. 1997. Age 25.*
 
My life had flipped completely.
Commuting to work at roughly the same hours as an ordinary salaryman, swaying home in a crowded train.
Honestly it was painful, but I was in no position to complain.
 
The difference from the late shift was that my partner had changed from Yonaga to the shop's nominal president, Takahashi Hiroshi.
This "president" wasn't the actual owner — apparently his role was to be the registered name-holder who would take all the blame if the police came.
Naturally he received money separately from his salary in the form of a naming fee.
 
Takahashi had a cheerful, oddly flashy personality.
But he didn't seem like a bad person.
He had apparently been a host（a male companion at a host club, a type of entertainment establishment in Japan）at some point, and he would call his former senior hosts into the shop to gamble.
 
Even so, Vega was basically a quiet shop.
 
Naruto, one half of the joint ownership, would often show his face at the shop during the early shift.
After talking with Takahashi about the shop, he would always make a point of striking up a casual conversation with me as well — perhaps out of consideration.
I thought he was a decent person.
 
But then I saw a terrifying side of him, and my assessment changed completely.
 
It was during the changeover between early and late shift.
Both owners, Naruto and Unno, happened to be there, and they started asking me about my All Japan Pro Wrestling days.
 
I was telling it straight, without embellishment, when Unno put a hand to his forehead and started doing what he apparently meant as an impression of President Giant Baba — making a mockery of it.
The staff member going on to the late shift saw this and burst out laughing.
 
Even if that world was behind me now, All Japan Pro Wrestling was my starting point.
Having President Baba — the man at the top of it — mocked to my face was something I could not tolerate.
 
"Excuse me……"
"Yeah, what?"
 
"Please don't make fun of the world I came from."
 
The shop went silent.
Unno and the staff member looked at each other.
 
"Huh? What are you talking about?"
"What's gotten into you all of a sudden?"
 
"I find this deeply unpleasant. Please stop."
 
The two of them started changing their expressions.
They probably thought they were being intimidating, but I had not lived a soft enough life to be shaken by that level of pressure.
 
"What did you say?"
"He is a president to whom I owe a debt of gratitude from my time there. Having him mocked like this is, frankly, unpleasant."
 
"What is this guy saying — some washed-up fixed-match wrestler……"
"That's right, pro wrestling is all rigged anyway!"
 
Unno, irritated by my refusal to back down.
But there are things I cannot concede.
 
At that moment, Naruto came into the shop.
I steeled myself — this was probably it, I was getting fired.
Well, Bōzu-san's reception was already over.
I could start again somewhere from scratch.
 
Naruto sensed the strange atmosphere in the shop and spoke to Unno.
 
"Hey, Naruto-kun~"
"What is it?"
 
"This new guy Iwakami — he's not working out after all."
 
Naruto's expression began to shift.
 
"What do you mean?"
 
His eyes sharpened.
 
"I told him pro wrestling was all fixed since he used to be in it, and he got angry……"
 
What a self-serving way to frame the story.
I was speechless.
 
"I did the Giant Baba impression and he suddenly blew up at me."
 
"I'm sorry…… With respect — this was something I genuinely threw my body into and worked at with everything I had. If someone calls it fixed, or makes a fool of the president I owe so much to — I simply can't stay quiet about that!"
 
"See, there he goes……"
 
Unno stroked his mustache with one finger and put on a triumphant expression.
 
"Pōoo~"
 
Unno started doing the Baba impression again without missing a beat.
 
"Please, truly stop."
"Pōoo~"
 
Unno was enjoying himself, taunting me.
Something similar had been done to me at Asakusa View Hotel, and it had infuriated me then too.
 
"Please."
"What, why are you getting so worked up?"
 
Naruto watched the situation quietly for a while.
 
"One more — pōoo~"
 
"……"
 
"Fixed match, and pōoo~"
"Take that back!"
 
"Hmm? What?"
"Please take it back!"
 
"This kid, honestly…… See, what a mouthy little punk, Naruto-kun."
 
Naruto slowly stood up and fixed me with a stare.
I felt my heart rate climbing.
 
"Unno-san……"
"Yeah, what?"
 
Unno looked blank.
 
"How old are you, exactly~? Hmm~? Iwakami has told you multiple times that this is something he worked hard at. Why is it that you…… can sit there smiling like that? I have to question what's going on inside your head. Unno-san — why would you do something like that to a subordinate who's about to start working for you~? Please, explain it to me~, Unno-san~"
 
"Uh, well…… that is~……"
"That's not an answer~! Look — you should probably work on breaking the habit of enjoying making fools of people, don't you think~?"
 
"Ah, yeah……"
 
I never expected Naruto to handle it like this……
 
Something gripped my chest a little.
 
With Unno（referred to as Mizuno by mistake in the original — likely a continuity slip）deflated beside him, Naruto turned his anger on the staff member who had laughed.
Told to apologize, the staff member frantically bowed his head to Naruto.
 
"Why are you apologizing to me~? That's not right~! Why aren't you apologizing to Iwakami-kun~?"
 
The way Naruto pressed his point — high-pitched voice, drawn-out syllables — was a different kind of frightening from anything I had seen before.
 
The staff member bowed and said sorry, at which point Naruto grabbed an ashtray and cracked it down on his head without warning.
 
"Why is it 'sumimasen'（formal apology）for me and just 'gomen'（casual sorry）for him~! Something's a little off with you~!"
 
The staff member pressed his hands to his bleeding head and kept apologizing desperately.
I stood up to shield him and said: "Naruto-san…… that's going too far."
 
Naruto saw that and broke into a genuinely delighted smile, saying warmly: "Yes, yes — as expected, Iwakami-kun, you're something else!"
I had known this wasn't a normal shop, but it hit me then — I had taken a job at a truly dangerous place.
 
Was it all right to keep working somewhere this dangerous?
 
Naruto — an owner who was anything but normal.
 
I asked if I could take a day off.
I gave a vague excuse about something to do with a previous job.
 
Takahashi just grinned and said breezily: "I can manage on my own somehow, it's fine. Get some proper rest."
 
After work, I stopped by Belvedere on the top floor of Asakusa View Hotel for the first time in a while.
Perhaps I needed to see old colleagues somewhere and feel something like relief.
 
My superior Hayashi and the other colleagues were glad to see me after so long.
They insisted I stay and drink at the lounge that night — I was more or less forced into the rest room.
 
In the stale air, staring up at the low ceiling, I drifted back through old memories.
 
In my field of vision: my right thumb.
I stared at it fixedly, with complete focus.
It was the part of my body I had trained hardest, outside of general conditioning.
Weight 96 kilograms, height 180 centimeters.
 
As a wrestler I had always fallen into the smaller category — so I had constantly been thinking about some kind of special foundation of strength that was mine alone.
Body-based techniques had their limits when you were on the smaller side.
Using your weight wasn't particularly effective.
Throwing techniques were always a struggle against someone heavier than you.
Joint locks — well, in an actual match you don't actually snap bones, so their deterrent value was limited.
 
What about strikes then?
 
With punches and kicks, there were countless people with more power and technique than me.
Wasn't there something……
 
It came to me by chance, the moment a needle pricked my finger.
Without using much force at all, something with a fine tip could easily pierce human skin.
 
Applying the logic of striking: the narrower the contact area when you hit, the greater the force.
 
I opened my right hand and stared at it.
My dominant hand was of course the right.
Line up the fingertips and thrust them forward in a nukite（spear-hand strike）……
 
No — still something lacking.
The finer the tip, the better.
Of the five fingers, the thinnest is the little finger……
 
But that would be too weak.
 
I had tried something once while doing fingertip push-ups.
With just the thumbs — one on each side — I could do it.
 
I tried taking the push-up position on the other four fingers without the thumbs.
It collapsed partway through — I couldn't push up.
 
The conclusion: a single thumb had more strength than the other four fingers combined.
 
So I trained the right thumb, and only the right thumb, to absolute exhaustion.
First: hold one end of a spread-open newspaper with my right hand and crumple it into a ball one-handed.
With a single sheet it wasn't that difficult — I could crumple it normally.
But trying the same thing with two sheets stacked together became a genuinely challenging task.
Every morning and evening paper delivered to our house — I crumpled them all daily with my right hand alone.
 
Then: fingertip push-ups on both thumbs only.
No fixed number per day — whenever I had spare time and strength left in my fingers, I repeated it as many times as I could.
My body would grow fatigued and try to stop moving, but I defied the brain's commands and kept pushing past the limit.
 
I practiced plunging my thumb into a bucket filled with small stones.
Then did the same thing aimed at an iron post.
Naturally, the thumbnail split and blood flew.
 
Pain was a given.
I was deliberately doing something painful……
 
I gritted my teeth and kept at it every day.
And so my thumb became a weapon.
 
The completion of a strike technique as cowardly as it was ruthless.
 
I named it myself: the Datotsu（打突 — literally "strike-thrust," a name the author coined for this technique）.
 
Unlike a conventional strike thrown straight at the opponent, this technique only showed its true value in close-quarters fighting — the kind that comes from a clinch.
From the opponent's complete blind side, directly from the flank — a cowardly technique that drove the trained thumb straight in.
 
I had once told Master Jumbo Tsuruta about the Datotsu.
 
"You idiot! Are you trying to kill someone?"
 
Tsuruta-shishō, who almost never lost his temper, raged like fire and slapped me hard across the cheek.
The words of President Giant Baba came back to me.
 
"Listen. In pro wrestling, what matters is that your opponent takes a stance ready to receive your attack — and then you pour every ounce of force into it."
 
Yes…… an opponent may suffer an accidental injury during a match.
But nobody deliberately tries to break the other person.
If all you did was throw attacks at someone, it would become a crude and joyless thing.
 
The opening bell rings, you drive a punch straight at the opponent's nose with full force, and the match is over in moments — you win.
Breaking a human nose is not a difficult thing.
 
If you did that, the crowd that came to watch might be thrilled in the moment.
But keep doing it as a spectacle and eventually no one would want to watch anymore.
The opponent would think about revenge, and eventually the fighting would turn into nothing but attempts to kill each other.
 
I had wasted enormous time and effort developing a cowardly sucker-punch technique — and all for nothing.
 
A technique that must never be used in pro wrestling.
No — a technique that must never be used on a human being, period.
 
Since completing the Datotsu, I had never once used it on another person.
Put another way — that was proof that things had never escalated to the point where someone's life was at stake.
 
I studied my left elbow.
A senior wrestler had locked the joint and this elbow had been destroyed once.
 
At that moment, my right arm had been free.
If I had wanted to, I could have driven the Datotsu in.
 
Why hadn't I used the Datotsu, even as my left elbow was being broken?
I didn't know the answer myself.
 
Would there ever come a moment in my life when I used this technique?
That was something I probably wouldn't know until the moment I completed my lifespan……
 
I extended my right thumb toward the ceiling and looked at it again.
 
The foundation of my strength……
 
The next morning I woke and dropped by Belvedere, where the manager insisted I sit down and eat the buffet on the house.
 
My junior Ejiri, who always looked up to me, said: "The cake and the fresh-squeezed orange juice are near their expiry date — please take them home" and handed me a bag.
I tried to decline, but Ejiri wouldn't hear of it.
 
"Tomorrow this orange juice gets thrown out anyway. The cake — everything left after lunch gets thrown out too. Isn't it better for Iwakami-san to take it home?"
 
Worn down by his sincerity, I decided to accept it gratefully.
 
Come to think of it, I hadn't done any horse racing recently.
I had come all the way to Asakusa for the first time in a while.
Maybe I'd buy a ticket for luck.
 
I left my bag and the bag of cake and juice in the rest room and headed to the Asakusa JRA（Japan Racing Association）off-track betting facility.
 
When I came back, the bag that had been on my bed was gone.
I searched everywhere in the rest room — nothing.
 
I went back to the lounge and asked a colleague.
Ejiri came over with a dark expression and apologized.
 
I asked what had happened.
One of the floor managers had happened to come in for a check of the rest room and spotted my bag.
When asked whose it was, apparently Ejiri had let my name slip.
With the contents inside, there was no way to deny it was mine — it couldn't be helped.
 
The general manager had gotten involved and I was told to come to the manager's office when I returned.
 
Ejiri looked like he was about to cry and kept apologizing, so I told him the fault was mine for leaving the bag behind to go to the races — not to worry.
It was a hassle, but necessary things were in the bag, so I headed to the manager's office.
 
Walking into the unpleasant atmosphere of the room, General Manager Maruyama adjusted his glasses and demanded: "Why is a former employee inside the hotel?"
I made up an excuse that covered for my colleagues and took all the blame on myself.
 
"It's true I no longer work here. But I still have colleagues here who I used to work alongside, so I only came to show my face."
 
"Is that the truth?"
"Yes, it is."
 
"Then why is this hotel's cake sitting in the rest room alongside your bag?"
 
"……"
 
"Could it be that one of the employees gave it to you as a gift?"
 
If I confirmed that here, I would cause trouble for the junior who had meant well.
 
"No……"
"No? That's a strange thing to say. You took our hotel's products — that's effectively the same as stealing."
 
"Are you going to hand me over to the police?"
"That's not what I'm intending."
 
"Then what would you like me to do?"
 
I fixed my gaze on Maruyama.
 
Damn you……
 
At that moment, Konno came back inside.
 
For some reason, trailing behind him was Tajima — a staff member from the members-only St. Christina next door.
What were these people planning……
 
"Tajima."
"Yes."
 
"How much does your establishment charge for one glass of orange juice?"
"One glass is one thousand yen."
 
Maruyama deliberately reached into the carry bag and produced the orange bottle, placing it in front of me.
A Smirnoff vodka bottle carefully washed and stripped of its label — inside, fresh orange juice sat in a cheerful, vivid color.
 
"How many glasses would you get out of this bottle, roughly?"
"Hmm, let's see…… about six to seven glasses."
 
"So somewhere between six thousand and seven thousand yen's worth."
"Yes."
 
At this point I finally understood what they were after.
They wanted to use a trumped-up complaint to squeeze money out of me.
 
"How many cakes are there? Count them."
 
"Yes. One, two, three……"
 
Tajima counting the cakes with a solemn expression.
Just watching his face in profile made me feel sick.
 
"Twenty-two in total."
 
"I see…… Say the orange juice is six thousand yen for three bottles — eighteen thousand yen. And the cakes at five hundred each — eleven thousand yen's worth. Iwakami, how much is that altogether?"
 
"……About thirty thousand."
"What kind of answer is that!"
 
My irritation had reached its limit.
 
"If I pay for it, it's not theft or anything else, is it?"
 
I pulled three 10,000-yen notes from my wallet and threw them into the air.
 
"What do you think you're doing!"
 
Whatever……
 
These worthless small-timers from this pathetic hotel.
 
I was already an ex-employee.
These people were no longer my superiors in any sense.
 
"Watch your mouth, you idiot! I'm not working here anymore. On top of that, you just used a manufactured complaint to squeeze money out of me. If anything, you're the ones who've forgotten something, aren't you?"
 
"Y-you……"
 
"'You'~? Come on…… I'm not based here anymore! Not at home either. Right now I'm in Shinjuku Kabukichō — in the underworld. Do you understand what that means? I can come to your place any day I want and make your life hell. Think about the position you're in."
 
"……"
 
I should have done this from the very start.
 
When I had poured myself into the work and ended up hospitalized from throat complications — they hadn't done a single thing.
I worked at a hotel under your management, collapsed on the job, and was essentially hospitalized because of it.
 
Not only did they not cover the medical bills — they had moved me out of Belvedere……
 
Let a fool get too comfortable and nothing good comes of it.
Time to give them a small scare.
 
"Watch your backs on the way home."
 
"……"
"Hey — don't just stand there. Where's my thank-you?"
 
"Uh……"
"'Uh' nothing, you idiot! I'm a customer who just bought your leftover cake and whatever else, aren't I? At more than the listed price, no less. Can't you even say thank you?"
 
"Th-thank you very much……"
 
Tajima buckled first and bowed his head.
 
"Hey — you two who call yourselves floor managers and were sitting there so full of yourselves! You can't even manage a proper greeting?"
"Th-thank you very much……"
 
The remaining two had been completely broken.
 
"Well — if I find myself with some free time, I'll be sure to drop by."
 
I left those parting words behind, slammed the manager's office door, and walked out of Asakusa View Hotel.
I was reminded that the hotel industry could have people like this rotting at the top as well.
 
Around that time it sank in — even if it was my old home, it was a place where an outsider had no business showing up anymore.
 
My place now was Shinjuku Kabukichō.
Working here, earning money, making a life.
 
Naruto would often interrupt work by telling Takahashi "I'm borrowing Iwakami-kun for a bit" and take me outside.
He would take me to a liquor shop to pick out a good bottle for a year-end gift — since I had been a hotel bartender, I would know my spirits — or treat me to a steak costing 10,000 yen a plate.
The treatment I received was clearly different from every other staff member.
 
What he often said was: if any of the employees are doing anything strange, please let me know.
I had no idea what "strange" even meant, so I just said yes.
 
The shop was still quiet as ever, and Takahashi would often use a key to open a table machine, fiddle with some buttons, and then play the games himself.
When I asked what he was doing, he explained that the owners watched the customer numbers, so he was playing himself to fake the accounts to some degree.
 
The entrance to the shop was always locked.
When the intercom rang, a monitor showed whoever was outside — you could tell immediately who had come.
 
When Unno appeared on the screen, Takahashi would stop the game immediately and slide the light-blocking panel on the table upright.
This apparently signaled that a customer was out for a moment and had the machine reserved.
 
When Unno asked who had it reserved, Takahashi would casually name some former host senior of his — it seemed like something he was keeping hidden from the owners' side.
 
"If any of the employees are doing anything strange, let me know" — what Naruto and Unno had said.
 
I felt a flicker of unease — was I being asked to report on Takahashi?
 
When Unno left, Takahashi started talking unprompted about how the owners had deceived him.
 
Apparently the poker game machines had settings that determined whether they paid out or not.
Whether you won or lost all came down to the setting.
 
Previously, Unno had shown Takahashi a setting on thermal paper, claiming this was what their shop ran on, and asked him to bring in people he knew.
Takahashi had brought them in good faith — but it turned out the setting shown was the absolute worst one, the kind that never paid out, and he had lost the trust of many people.
 
Whatever Takahashi was doing playing the games when the owners weren't around — I didn't fully understand the details.
 
While I was still wondering whether to say something to Naruto, the intercom rang.
Naruto was standing at the entrance.
 
Takahashi grabbed my right hand and pressed a folded 10,000-yen note into it: "Iwakami-san, put it away!"
As I stood there stunned, he gestured urgently — "Quickly!" — miming putting it in my trouser pocket as he opened the door.
I shoved the note away on reflex.
 
Takahashi chatted with Naruto about the shop's situation as if nothing had happened.
A trickle of customers came in, and the day ended without incident.
 
A 10,000 yen outside my salary.
Takahashi was doing something underhanded behind the owners' backs.
 
But even if I had just been swept along, hadn't I become an accomplice?
 
No — that wasn't it.
There had been a part of me that was willing because it meant extra money.
 
I became aware that I was slowly being dyed by the darkness — becoming a resident of Kabukichō.
 
A slightly early year-end party.
The venue was Jojōen（a high-end yakiniku chain）yakiniku restaurant.
 
Naruto said it was a little early but thanked everyone for their hard work this year, and handed out envelopes to each person.
 
Inside was 100,000 yen.
I had been at Vega for less than a month.
The fact that he gave someone like me that amount made me genuinely glad.
 
Naruto and Unno trusted me — they thought of me as serious.
They treated me to good meals roughly every other day.
 
Seeing that I had earned a peculiar kind of trust from the owners, Takahashi must have found it easier to skim money with me around.
 
On top of my salary, extra income was coming in every day.
Before I knew it, I had accumulated more money than I had ever held at one time in my life.
Even so, it still hadn't reached one million yen.
 
Today again Naruto took me outside.
He treated me to a steak and said there was another place to go — and took me toward Roppongi.
 
He stopped the car at a suspicious-looking building and told Unno to stay and watch the car.
 
I went inside with him.
Through several heavy-security doors, a scene out of a film spread before me.
 
If I was reading this right…… this was a casino.
 
The black-uniformed staff bowed deeply the moment they saw Naruto, and he walked straight past without a glance.
Through another door, there was a man whose face made it immediately clear he was the boss here.
 
Both men were smiling as they talked, but neither pair of eyes was smiling.
Beside the boss-type man, a large heavyset man taller than me stood glaring at us.
 
"Naruto-san, you've brought another tough-looking one today."
"Indeed — he used to be in All Japan Pro Wrestling."
"Is that so. Our man's karate. This should be interesting."
 
Listening to the strange exchange, I gradually understood — they were planning to make me fight the large man beside them.
 
Karate, he'd said.
Going up against him in a striking exchange would be a bad idea.
Naturally I clenched my right fist and extended my thumb sideways.
 
The large man spoke.
 
"I may have been expelled from my school, but I'm from the same style that was the first to step up when Rickson Gracie（a Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioner and member of the Gracie family, considered one of the greatest fighters in the history of martial arts）came to Japan. A fake-match pro wrestler is no contest."
 
"……"
 
I had no intention of fighting at all.
But those words touched something deep inside me.
 
"Our school doesn't just train strikes — punches and kicks. We were among the first to incorporate joint locks, throws, and chokes as well. What could a wrestler do against that?"
 
I felt my field of vision narrowing.
Without realizing it, I had been brought somewhere there was no walking away from.
 
The large man was looking down at me with total composure.
I reluctantly opened my mouth.
 
"Naruto-san……"
"Yes?"
 
"Is it all right if I deal with this one?"
"What did you just say, punk!"
 
The large man flew into a rage.
 
"You do strikes and other things too, right?"
"That's right."
 
"Then it's not really karate, is it? Might want to start by dropping the name karate."
 
The large man's breathing grew louder.
I pushed further.
 
"Think about it — karate, but with chokes, joint locks, throws? Don't make me laugh. That's already not karate anymore. And another thing — you've been stinking this whole time. Are you brushing your teeth?"
"Say that one more time."
 
"More than that — something I've been wondering since earlier. Why are you talking like you're still part of the school? You said you were expelled. In other words — fired."
"That's enough, punk!"
 
Face completely red, the large man came at me with a wide, telegraphed haymaker.
A big wind-up, a slow-moving attack.
With a clear head there was nothing remotely frightening about it — I could slip something like that as many times as I wanted.
 
Without closing my eyes, I extended my right hand along the trajectory of the incoming attack.
A technique that only worked because it was used unexpectedly for the first time.
My most closely guarded defensive move — the Rasen（螺旋, "Spiral"）.
 
Against an attack coming at you with full momentum, you make contact with your wrist against the attacker's wrist from the side, using that point as a pivot and wrapping your hand around it.
That alone is enough to deflect the attack's vector and immediately destroy the attacker's balance.
It was a technique that required moving instinctively from the sensation of the moment of contact.
 
The large man pitched forward with a loud crash.
No point dragging this out — I would finish it here.
The Datotsu hadn't even been necessary.
 
I immediately pressed my weight onto him and took hold of his right arm with both hands.
I threaded my left arm under his armpit, and then — unlike a normal arm lock — lifted upward while he was still face-down.
 
In pro wrestling terms it was something like a wrist lock, but mine was slightly different.
I also seized his wrist with my free right hand, twisting it while fixing the joint in place.
 
The large man was completely unable to move.
If I leaned my weight back, it would take nothing to shatter his shoulder and wrist.
 
I glanced toward Naruto.
By any measure, this was over.
Stop it already……
 
And then it happened.
With the slight movement left in his fingertips, the large man reached for my left eye.
On reflex I applied force.
 
"Ugyaaaah——!"
 
A sickening, nauseating sensation spread through my whole body.
There was a horrible sound, and then the large man's scream.
I had wrenched the locked joint in the opposite direction with all my strength.
 
I had no problem breaking the bones of a cowardly man like this.
There was always a part of me that felt that way.
But the moment you actually destroy a human body, no matter how much time passes, that nauseating feeling never goes away.
 
The room echoed with nothing but the large man's screaming as he clutched his right arm.
With this, I had moved one step closer to the darkness.
 
My body was trembling slightly.